Another night, another winnable game, another set of pants pissed. The problems remain the same, and for the most part, so do the outcomes. On paper a 2-1-1 road trip spanning a break is ultimately fine, but this team doesn’t have the luxury of fine anymore.

The Hawks came out and played what old hockey redasses would call a “solid road period” in the first. They scored at evens, controlled the play at evens if only barely (24 attempts to 23), and took a power play into the break. They promptly scored on said advantage, and that’s when the snowball began to roll down the toilet.

Aside from taking a 2-0 lead on the road with over 35 minutes left to play, tonight the Hawks collapsed on their netminder Jeff G.L. Ass as much as can be recalled in the history of this publication across its many stops. Glass’ rebound control has been hot vomit since he got here, and it appears that the coaching staff knows that and has been trying to compensate for it with a roster that’s not constructed or trained to do so, and the results bore that out. Exacerbating things is the Hawks’ inability to get the backpressure they need from forwards to stand up puck carriers entering their zone, multiplied by score effects on the road at the end of the trip. The result was wholly predictable.

Brent Sbarro’s inability to get the full load of dung out of his breezers directly resulted in both the Stajan goal and the Frolik game-tying tally. But please, keep trotting him out there with the Tilt-A-Whirl that is Erik Gustafsson.

Lance Bouma and Jan Rutta are certainly the first names that any coach would turn to when looking to inject some kind of life into his team, that’s for damn sure.

Our Cousin Vinny had yet another highly active game, and damn near put the Hawks up 3-0, as he and his linemates believed he had. From that point on however, it was all Calgary.

The Toews line got absolutely skulled by the 3M line tonight, with no one getting north of 32% on the evening even in spite of Duclair’s breakaway tally.

These two will do this dance again on Monday night, the Hawks will once again have an opportunity to have a galvanizing victory that will propel their playoff push.